TO THE CHURCH
“As A Thief In The Night”
. F. D. NICHOL, Editor
- The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald
In the Washington Sunday Star, one of America’s lead-
ing newspapers, appeared recently a long editorial entitled
“As a Thief in the Night”. The editorial opens thus:
“It is hardly possible to review the news of the past
few days without finding one’s thoughts turning to a
somber warning written nearly 1,900 years ago. The
news does not make pleasant reading. Far from it. For
the tidings are ‘of the kind to cast a brooding pall over
any one who will pause, if just for a moment or two, to
reflect on the meaning of it all.”’—September 27, 1953.
The editorial then quotes President Eisenhower's state-
ment that “every new invention of the scientists seems
to make it more nearly possible for man to insure his own
elimination from the globe”. The editorial quotes equally
striking statements from such men as Val Peterson, Civil
Defense head, and Gordon Dean, until recently chairman
of the Atomic Energy Commission.
The editorial reminds the reader that these terrifying
statements are not “mere street-corner gossip,” but are
instead the most authoritative declarations possible on the
subject. The editorial also notes that military men con-
fess that no adequate defense against air-bome bombs is
possible, even though we ‘spend a sum of money for de-
fense that would bankrupt the country. Then follows
this:
“Is there some other alternative? Mr. Dean spoke some-
what in the spirit of a man grasping at straws, of rallying
world opinion against Russian aggression, and of invest
ing the ‘statesmen’ of the free world with the duty of
finding an answer.
“The poverty of these suggestions speaks for itself.
There is little real hope in any of them. The race upon
which man is embarked is a race to contrive the means
of destroying the human species. If Mr. Dean is correct,
the race will be over within a year, or at most, two years.
By that time both we and the Russians will possess the
weapons of total destruction.”
Up to this point the Star editor has been giving us a
restatement of what we have heard repeatedly. The
truly unusual part of his statement is what follows and
constitutes the climax of his remarks:
“So it may be profitable, while a little time remains, to
turn our minds back to the second epistle of the Apostle
Peter. ‘But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in
the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a
great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat,
the earth also and the works that are therein shall be
burned up.’
=All articles bearing the credit line “R. & H.” are reprinted from the
Review and Herald, general church paper of Seventh-day Adventists.
FEBRUARY, 1954
“As we reckon time, these words were written long ago
—in, the first century after the birth of Christ. But,
though penned with a different thought in mind, it is not
necessarily a message so remote in the point of time that
it is robbed of all significance for us today”.
Article Reflects General Alarm
As already remarked, most of what this editorial sets
forth has already been presented in various forms and
with increasing earnestness over a period of about eight
years, that is, since the first atomic bomb was exploded.
That fact does not minimize the importance and signi-
ficance of the editorial, but rather the opposite. Wise
men began truly to be alarmed in 1945 with regard to the
very existence of life upon this earth. Nothing that has
happened in scientific laboratories since that date has
quited that alarm or silenced the doleful predictions of
the scientists. Rather the contrary. The paragraph we
have just quoted is, in large part, simply a reflection of
the collective fears of the wisest of scientists and states-
men.
A Mood of Indifference
We have tried to imagine the tension and the excite-
ment that would have occurred both in Adventist ranks
and in the ranks of all outside our faith, if suddenly the
public press had released news of potential world des-
truction resident in the findings of the scientists in great
military laboratories. But with just such news pouring
upon us at an increasing rate for the last eight years, nei-
ther we nor the world are unduly startled. If we are
startled, then we magnificently conceal it, one and all.
Startled men do not act as we do. Men who truly believe
that an avalanche of death may soon and suddenly sweep
them all to eternity do not relax to watch television, to
loll at pleasure resorts, to engage endlessly in idle chit-
chat. But that is exactly what the world is doing right
now. And are Adventists, too, altogether different from
that in their mood?
There is another question we would ask: If the solemn
declarations of the world’s wisest men and its leading
statesmen regarding the possibility of world destruction
in the very near future do not startle us, then what would?
But the fact that most of us seem to be far from alarm,
leads us to ask another question: What is to prevent
the great day of God from coming upon us as upon the
world, like a thief in the night? We would ask the
reader to tarry on that question a moment. We think it
a most vital one.
We should never forget that the solid foundation for
our belief in the nearness of the end of the world is the
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